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Dr. Darden North: Darden North, a board-certified OB-GYN and daVinci Robotic Surgeon in Flowood, Mississippi, has presented at literary events like the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration and Killer Nashville. He has also served as Chairman of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Foundation and Mississippi Health Partners.

Royal Allis: Royal Aills, executive director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, is an Arkansas native who has led teams at both commercial and public television stations. Prior to joining MPB, Aills was general manager at RSU Public TV at Rogers State University in Oklahoma. During his tenure at RSU TV, Aills’ team won numerous awards, including four Emmys.  

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Joseph Earl Thomas - Joseph Earl Thomas is an American writer and educator known for his memoir "Sink", which was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. His work has appeared in publications such as The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Dilettante Army, and The New York Times Book Review.

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.  

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Julia Philips: Julia Philips is the author of the bestselling novel Bear and Disappearing Earth, a finalist for the National Book Award, and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.   

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Crystal Wilkinson: Crystal Wilkinson is an acclaimed American author, poet, and educator known for her poignant and lyrical explorations of identity, family, and rural Black life in Appalachia.

Host

Ebony Lumumba: Ebony Lumumba is an English professor specializing in African American and Diasporic literature. Her work intersects education, activism, and literature, making her a vital voice in discussions on contemporary race, culture, and social progress.

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Richard Grant: Richard Grant is an author, journalist, and television host. He currently writes for the Smithsonian magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph UK, Aeon, and several other publications. He grew up in London, England, and now lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.

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Kate Medley: Kate Medley is a North Carolina-based visual journalist documenting the American South. Born and raised in Mississippi Kate has investigated Civil Rights-era cold cases, covered the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina, and chased down hot tamales and Koolicles in the Mississippi Delta.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.   

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Patrick deWitt: Patrick deWitt is the author of the novels French Exit (a national bestseller), The Sisters Brothers (a New York Times bestseller short-listed for the Booker Prize), and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he has also lived in California and Washington, and now resides in Portland, Oregon.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.

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Tyriek White: Tyriek Rashawn White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn, NY. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Literary Foundation, which seeks to provide mutual aid and various resources to Black writers across the diaspora. He has received fellowships from Callaloo Writing Workshop, New York State Writers Institute, and Key West Writers' Workshop, among other honors. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world. 

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Jamila Minnicks: Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup (Algonquin Books, 2023) won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and she also earned a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction and essays have been published in CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Her piece, Politics of Distraction, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Minnicks is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.

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Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, NC with her husband, Evan and sons Ross and Charlie. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe, was released by the University Press of Kentucky in 2020, a finalist for the Weatherford Award and named one of NPR's Best Books of 2020. In 2021, it received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water is winner of the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012) and a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014). Clapsaddle's work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, South Writ Large, Our State Magazine and The Atlantic. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette returned to teaching at Swain County High School for over a dozen years. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and is the President of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. Clapsaddle established Bird Words, LLC in 2022 and works as an independent contractor and consultant.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.

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James McBride: James McBride is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Oprah's Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal and an accomplished musician, McBride is also a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.

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Harrison Scott Key: Harrison Scott Key is the author of three books, including his newest book, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, as well as The World's Largest Man (winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor) and Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, the inspiration for his popular TEDx talk, "The Funny Thing About the American Dream," featured at TED.com. He is executive dean at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia.

Host

Matt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.

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Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Perry is the author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, winner of the 2019 Bograd-Weld Biography Prize from the Pen America Foundation. She is also the author of Breathe: A Letter to My Sons; Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Perry, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago, lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.

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Antoine Wilson is the author of the novels Panorama City and The Interloper. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Best New American Voices, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications, and he is a contributing editor of A Public Space. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, he lives in Los Angeles. His website is: AntoineWilson.com

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Panelists:

Ariel Lawhon is a critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction. She is the author of THE WIFE THE MAID AND THE MISTRESS, FLIGHT OF DREAMS, I WAS ANASTASIA, and the CODE NAME HÉLÈNE. Her books have been translated into numerous languages and have been Library Reads, One Book One County, Indie Next, Costco, Amazon Spotlight, and Book of the Month Club selections. She lives in the rolling hills outside Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and four sons. Ariel splits her time between the grocery store and the baseball field.

Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling, USA Today bestselling, and #1 international bestselling author of more than a dozen novels, including THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS, THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES and THE WINEMAKER'S WIFE. Kristin, whose books have been translated into 29 languages, is also the co-founder and co-host of the popular web series and podcast Friends & Fiction. She lives in Orlando with her husband and son. Visit her at www.KristinHarmel.com.

A Chicago-born writer based in Pittsburgh, PA, Marisel Vera is the author of The Taste of Sugar and If I Bring You Roses. Through her work, Vera explores the particular burdens that Puerto Ricans carry as colonial subjects of the most powerful country in the world.

Moderator:

Tracy Carr is the Mississippi Center for the Book Coordinator and the Library Services Director at the Mississippi Library Commission.

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Panelists:

DEBORAH D. DOUGLAS is the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project, leading thought leadership fellowships and programs that include the University of Texas at Austin, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Urgent Action Fund in South Africa and Kenya, and the McCormick Foundation-supported Youth Narrating Our World (YNOW). While teaching at her alma mater, Northwestern University's Medill School, she spearheaded a graduate investigative journalism capstone on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and taught best practices in Karachi, Pakistan. She is an award-winning journalist, including the 2019 Studs Terkel award, and founding managing editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Douglas is author of "Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler's Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement" (Moon Travel, 2021) and is among 90 contributors to "Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019," edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (Random House/One World).

A native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, Roy is the Executive Director and one of the founders of the Hill Country Project . He was active as a high school student in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and then as a general organizer. Roy earned his Bachelor's degree in Sociology at Brandeis University in 1970. Continuing his education at Brandeis, he went on to earn a Masters and later a Doctorate in Political Science in 1978. He has also pursued additional studies at Jackson State, Duke, Carnegie-Mellon, Michigan and Harvard Universities.

He has a wife, Rubye and one daughter, Aisha Isoke.   

William Ferris is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997-2001), Ferris has written or edited 16 books and created 15 documentary films. He co-edited with Charles Wilson the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His books include: Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues, The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists, and The South in Color: A Visual Journal. His most recent publication Voices of Mississippi received two Grammy Awards for Best Liner Notes and for Best Historical Album. Ferris curated "I Am a Man:" Civil Rights Photographs in the American South-1960-1970, which is on exhibit at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and is accompanied by his latest book "I Am a Man": Civil Rights Photographs in the American South-1960-1970.

His honors include the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, the American Library Association's Dartmouth Medal, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and the W.C. Handy Blues Award. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine named him among the Top Ten Professors in the United States. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. Ferris received the B. L. C. Wailes Award, given to a Mississippian who has achieved national recognition in the field of history by the Mississippi Historical Society. In 2017, Ferris received the Mississippi Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Moderator :

Motivational speaker, historian, and women's activist, Pamela D.C. Junior is a native of Jackson, Mississippi and earned a B.S. in Education with a minor in Special Education from Jackson State University. Pamela is the newly appointed director of the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Mississippi.

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Panelists:

Howard Hunter is a native of New Orleans and a history teacher 38 years. He has published articles on New Orleans and the Civil War for both academic and general audiences. He is past president of the Louisiana Historical Society. Tearing Down the Lost Cause with co-author James Gill is his first book.

Karen L. Cox is an award-winning historian, Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and professor of history at the University

of North Carolina at Charlotte. A successful public intellectual, she has written op- eds for the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, TIME, and more.

Dr. Cox regularly gives media interviews on the subject of southern history and culture and

is the author of four books, including No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice (April 2021), Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture, and Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South.

Moderator:

Mitch Landrieu is an American Politician, Lawyer, author, speaker, nonprofit leader and CNN political commentator. He served as the 61st Mayor of New Orleans (2010-2018). Landrieu gained national prominence for his powerful decision to take down four Confederate monuments in New Orleans, which also earned him the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In his best-selling book, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History, Landrieu recounts his personal journey confronting the issue of race and institutional racism that still plagues America. He recently launched E Pluribus Unum, an initiative in the South created to fulfill America's promise of justice and opportunity for all by breaking down the barriers that divide us by race and class. Prior to serving as Mayor, Landrieu served two terms as lieutenant governor and 16 years in the state legislature. He also served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

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Panelists:

Chris McLaughlin is founder and executive director of the Animal Rescue Front. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Boston with a BA in earth sciences, she lives in Massachusetts with two cats. This is her first book.

Dr. Christian Pinnen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Mississippi College. Dr. Pinnen joined MC's faculty in 2012 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published articles and book chapters on colonial Mississippi, specifically the Natchez District. His first book, Complexion of Empire in Natchez: Race and Slavery in the Mississippi Borderlands was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2021. His second book, a co-authored volume with Charles Weeks entitled Colonial Mississippi: A Borrowed Land was published my University Press of Mississippi in 2021 as well. He currently teaches U.S. History, History of the Old South, Latin America Survey, the American Revolution, and American Slavery. His research focuses on race and slavery in the Spanish-American borderlands and capitalism in early America. Currently he is researching the history of the Forks of the Road Slave Market in Natchez for the National Park Service with Max Grivno. Dr. Pinnen can be reached via Twitter (@ChristianPinnen) or through his website, www.christianpinnen.com.

Deanne Love Stephens is a Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her first publication, Plague Among the Magnolias: The 1878 yellow Fever Epidemic in Mississippi was published by the University of Alabama Press.  

Mike Bunn is a historian and author who has worked with several cultural heritage organizations in the Southeast. He currently serves as Director of Historic Blakeley State Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama. He is author or co-author of several books, Mike is editor of Muscogiana, the journal of the Muscogee County (Georgia) Genealogical Society. He is also Chair of the Baldwin County Historic Development Commission. Mike earned his undergraduate degree at Faulkner University and two masters degrees at the University of Alabama. Mike and his wife Tonya live in Daphne, Alabama with their daughter Zoey. www.mikebunn.net

Tori Bush is a writer, teacher and PhD candidate in the English department at Louisiana State University with an interest in the environmental humanities, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies. She is co-editor of the anthology, The Gulf South: An Anthology of Environmental Writing published by University Press of Florida in 2021. She also has an MFA in creative nonfiction and has forthcoming works in Southern Quarterly and ISLE.

Moderator:

Scott Naugle is the co-owner of Pass Christian Books/Cat Island Coffeehouse on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is the President of Consumer Solutions for BXS Insurance, a division of BancorpSouth. Scott is a graduate of Penn State University, Millsaps College, and Tulane University. He resides in Pass Christian, Mississippi

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Nic Stone is an Atlanta native and a Spelman College graduate. After working extensively in teen mentoring and living in Israel for several years, she returned to the United States to write full-time. Nic’s debut novel for young adults, Dear Martin, was a New York Times bestseller and a William C. Morris Award finalist. She is also the author of the teen titles Odd One Out, a novel about discovering oneself and who it is okay to love, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year and a Rainbow Book List Top Ten selection, and Jackpot, a love-ish story that takes a searing look at economic inequality.

Clean Getaway, Nic’s first middle-grade novel, deals with coming to grips with the pain of the past and facing the humanity of our heroes. Nic lives in Atlanta with her adorable little family.

Host:

Jackson native Tonja Murphy is thrilled to join the team after serving on the Board of Directors. Tonja puts her love for community, students, and books to use with the Mississippi Book Festival, as she takes on the role of Community Engagement Coordinator.

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Panelists:

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the New York Times best-selling author of WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS, finalist for the Kirkus Prize in non-fiction, and recently named the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year. She is also the author of four books of poetry, and is poetry editor of SIERRA, the national magazine of the Sierra Club. Awards for her writing include a fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Council, Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for poetry, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her writing has appeared in NYTimes Magazine, ESPN Magazine, and twice in Best American Poetry. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi's MFA program. 

HELEN ELLIS is the author of Southern Lady Code, American Housewife and Eating the Cheshire Cat. Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City. You can find her on Twitter @WhatIDoAllDay and Instagram @American-Housewife.

LAUREN HOUGH was born in Germany and raised in seven countries and West Texas. She's been an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a green-aproned barista, a bartender, a livery driver, and, for a time, a cable guy. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Guardian, and HuffPost. She lives in Austin.

Moderator:

Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, is the former poet laureate of Mississippi and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She's won grants and awards from the N.E.A., the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Fennelly has published three books of poetry and three of prose, most recently, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, which was a Goodreaders Favorite and an Atlanta Journal Constitution Best Book. She lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children In Oxford, MS.  https://www.bethannfennelly.com/

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Panelists:

Cynthia Barnett is the author of three previous books, including Rain, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. She lives with her family in Gainesville, Florida, where she is also Environmental Journalist in Residence at the University of Florida. http://cynthiabarnett.net

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History, which received awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physicists and was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; and the novels King Zeno, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The Mayor's Tongue. He is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to The Atlantic, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. His new book is Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade. Rich lives in New Orleans.

Patrick Dean writes on the outdoors, outdoor athletes, and the environment. He has worked as a teacher, a political media director, and is presently the executive director of a rail-trail nonprofit. An avid trail-runner, paddler, and mountain-biker, he lives with his wife and dogs on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee.

Moderator:

Dustin Parsons is the author of Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, With Diagrams. His work appears recently in The Georgia Review, Brevity, Waxwing, and many other magazines. He teaches writing and literature at the University of Mississippi. 

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Panelists:

With almost two million books in print in fifteen different languages, Karen White is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 28 novels, including the popular Charleston-set Tradd Street mystery series, The Last Night in London, Dreams of Falling, The Night the Lights Went Out, and Flight Patterns. She is the coauthor of All the Ways We Said Goodbye, The Glass Ocean and The Forgotten Room with New York Times bestselling authors Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two spoiled Havanese dogs near Atlanta, Georgia and on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Besides writing, Karen spends her time reading, playing piano, and avoiding cooking.

Katherine St. John is a native of Mississippi and a graduate of the University of Southern California who spent over a decade in the film industry as an actress, screenwriter, and director before turning to penning novels. When she's not writing, she can be found hiking or on the beach with a good book. Katherine's novels are THE LION'S DEN and THE SIREN.

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times-bestselling author of six novels, including Feels Like Falling, The Peachtree Bluff series, and Under the Southern Sky. A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's school of journalism, her writing has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Southern Living, Traditional Home, USA TODAY, Domino, and O. Henry. Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Her work has been optioned for film and television, and her books have received numerous accolades including Southern Living's Most Anticipated Beach Reads, Parade's Big Fiction Reads, and Entertainment Weekly's Spring Reading Picks. Kristy is the co-creator and co-host of the weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction. She blogs with her mom Beth Woodson on Design Chic and loves connecting with fans on KristyWoodsonHarvey.com. She lives on the North Carolina coast with her husband and son where she is (always!) working on her next novel.

Moderator:

Lyn Roberts has been a bookseller at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi since 1988. Sometime after that she became the general manager of what is now four stores on five floors in three buildings on Oxford's town square in the center of town. She lives in Taylor with her husband Douglas.  

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Panelists:

Anjali Enjeti is a former attorney, award-winning journalist, and activist. She writes a political column for ZORA magazine and teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Reinhardt University. Her recent essays and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, The Nation, Longreads, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Al Jazeera, and The Paris Review. She lives with her family near Atlanta.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her stories have appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review and others. Sleepovers is her first book.

Gordy Sauer is a native Texan and transplant Missourian. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and an MA from Clemson University. His writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine and Boulevard, among other places, and he received a 2013 artist's grant for residency at the Vermont Studio Center. A lifelong educator, he has taught snowboarding, fly fishing, middle school math and science, and now works as a speechwriter at Mizzou. This is his first novel.

Moderator:

Meg Reid is the Director of Hub City Press in Spartanburg, South Carolina. A book designer and editor, she also writes extensively about all areas of design. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from University of North Carolina Wilmington and moved to Spartanburg in 2013. She lives in a bungalow with her husband, two cats, and a short-legged terrier mix.

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Panelists:

Gin Phillips is the author of six novels, ranging from historical fiction to literary thriller to middle grade. Her work has been sold in 29 countries. Gin's debut novel, The Well and the Mine, won the 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Her recent novel, Fierce Kingdom, was named one of the Best Crime Novels of 2017 by the New York Times Book Review. GiIt was also was named one of the best books of 2017 by Publishers Weekly, NPR, Amazon, and Kirkus Reviews. A Kirkus starred review called it "poignant and profound," adding that "this adrenaline-fueled thriller will shatter readers like a bullet through bone."  Born in Montgomery, Al., Gin graduated from Birmingham-Southern College with a degree in political journalism. After time spent in Ireland, New York, and Washington, D.C., she currently lives with her family (plus a schnoodle and a mini golden mountain doodle) in Birmingham.

Lee Durkee is a graduate of the Mississippi public school system and was bussed to various schools throughout the Hattiesburg area. He later attended Pearl River Junior College, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Arkansas, and Syracuse University. He is the author of the novels RIDES OF THE MIDWAY (WW Norton, 2000) and THE LAST TAXI DRIVER (Tin House Books, 2020). His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Sun, The Best of the Oxford American, Zoetrope: All Story, Tin House, & Mississippi Noir. In 2022 Scribner will publish Stalking Shakespeare, a memoir about his obsession with trying to find a lost portrait of William Shakespeare. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Moderator:

Jimmy Cajoleas was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his MFA from the University of Mississippi and is the author of five novels for children and young adults. He now lives in New York.

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Panelists:

Don Tate is an award-winning author, and the illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children. He is also one of the founding hosts of the blog The Brown Bookshelf - a blog designed to push awareness of the myriad of African American voices writing for young readers, with book reviews, author and illustrator interviews -- and a one-time member of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children's literature. Don's books include Carter Reads The Newspaper (Peachtree Publishing, 2019), No Small Potatoes: Junius G. Groves and his Kingdom in Kansas (Knopf, 2018), Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions (Charlesbridge, 2016), The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch (Eerdmans, 2015) and many others. He is also the author of Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton (Peachtree,2015); It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw (Lee & Low Books, 2102), both books are Ezra Jack Keats award winners, and recently, Strong As Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became The Strongest Man on Earth (Charlesbridge, 2017), Par-Tay! Dance of the Veggies (and their friends), written by Eloise Greenfield (Alazar, 2018), and Stalebread Charlie and the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band, written by Michael Mahin (Clarion, 2018). Don's latest titles include William Still and his Freedom Stories: Father of the Underground Railroad (Peachtree Publishing Company, Nov. 2020), and Swish! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters, written by Suzanne Slade (Little Brown, Nov. 2020). He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

Gilbert Ford holds a BFA in Illustration from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Writing For Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author and illustrator of picture books Flying Lessons, The Marvelous Thing That Came from a Spring, and How the Cookie Crumbled. The Mysterious Messenger marks his middle grade novel debut that he has authored and illustrated.

Melissa Iwai is a children's book author and illustrator who incorporates both traditional and digital media into her art. When she's not working, Melissa cooks and develops her own recipes. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

Moderator:

Ellen Hunter Ruffin, associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has been curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection since 2006. She has served on the Newbery Medal Committee, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, and the Schneider Family Book Award. She also serves as an administrator of the Ezra Jack Keats Award.

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Panelists:

DAWNIE WALTON is a writer, editor, and author of the novel The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. She earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2018) and holds a journalism degree from Florida A&M University (1997). Formerly an editor at Essence and Entertainment Weekly, she has received fellowships in fiction writing from MacDowell and the Tin House Summer Workshop. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband.

MATEO ASKARIPOUR's work aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement, no matter the obstacle. He was a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and his writing has appeared in Entrepreneur, Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Medium, and elsewhere. His debut novel BLACK BUCK was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick. He lives in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @AskMateo. 

Robert Jones, Jr. is a writer from New York City. He received his B.F.A. in creative writing, and M.F.A. in fiction from Brooklyn College. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Essence, and The Paris Review. He is the creator and curator of the social-justice, social-media community Son of Baldwin, which has over 275,000 members across platforms. The Prophets is his debut novel. 

Moderator:

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You, which will be published by One World Random House in August 2021. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. The novel was also a New York Times Editor's Choice. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. 

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Panelists:

Storytelling is the heart and soul of Elizabeth McCain's life. Originally from Mississippi, she is the author of a compelling memoir, A Lesbian Belle Tells OUTrageous Southern Stories of Family, Loss, and Love, an expansion of her award-winning one-woman play. Elizabeth's true tales are about her Mississippi roots, coming out in Washington, DC as a lipstick lesbian, experiencing family rejection, and finding love and belonging. Her stories take readers and audiences on a wild ride through a Southern Belle's life of soul-searching, rule breaking, and truth telling. Elizabeth's mission is to inspire people to share their own stories for personal growth, transformation, and community building. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her spouse, Marie, and their two spoiled dogs. Elizabeth will perform her play in October in Provincetown, MA, for Women's Week. She will also be performing and doing book readings throughout the South soon. www.elizabethmccain.com.

John F. Marszalek III is the author of "Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi" (2020, University Press of Mississippi), named the 2020 Digital Book World Best Nonfiction Book and Best Book Published by a University Press. He is also a host of the podcast Queer Voices of the South on the New Books Network.

Before moving back to Mississippi, John lived in Buffalo, NY, Washington, DC, Fort Lauderdale, FL, and New Orleans, LA. John lives with his husband in Starkville, Mississippi.

M Shelly Conner is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas. She and her wife live on their central Arkansas homestead with their dog Whiskey where she writes about DIY, black queer womanhood, self-sustainable living and their interesting intersections. Her debut novel everyman (Blackstone Publishing) is available for pre-order from all retailers and will be released July 20, 2021.

Martin Padgett has an MFA from the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and received a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellowship. He has written for Oxford American, Gravy, Details, and Business Week. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Phillip "Pip" Gordon was born in Memphis and grew up in West Tennessee. He graduated in 2005 from the University of Tennessee at Martin and holds an MA and PhD from the University of Mississippi where he was awarded the Francis Bell McCool Fellowship for Faulkner Studies. His most recent projects include an essay on the how the 1918 Influenza pandemic influenced Faulkner's writing in the Fall 2020 issue of the Mississippi Quarterly and forthcoming essay on trans studies approaches to Faulkner's works in the Faulkner Journal. 

He currently lives in Platteville, Wisconsin, where he is an Associate Professor of English and Gay Studies Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. 

Moderator:

Jaime Harker is professor of English and the director of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi, where she teaches American literature, LGBTQ literature, and gender studies. She is the author of America the Middlebrow: Women's Novels, Progressivism, and Middlebrow Authorship Between the Wars, Middlebrow Queer: Christopher Isherwood in America, The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement, and the Queer Literary Canon. She is also the founder of Violet Valley Bookstore, a queer feminist bookstore in Water Valley, Mississippi.

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Panelists:

Adam Clay was born and raised in Mississippi. He is the author of four book of poems. His most recent collection, To Make Room for the Sea, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2020. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Bennington Review, Georgia Review, Boston Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission. He directs the Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi, where he teaches creative writing and edits Mississippi Review.

Ashley M. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel and dark / / thing. Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival.

Catherine Pierce is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days (2020), The Tornado Is the World (2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Each of her last three books received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mississippi Arts Commission. Pierce's work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Southern Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. She is professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Richard Boada is the author of the poetry collections: We Find Each Other in the Darkness, The Error of Nostalgia, and Archipelago Sinking. He is the recipient of the 2020 Mississippi Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and has been nominated for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award in 2013, 2015, and 2021. He is a graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His poetry appears in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Urban Voices: 51 Poets / 51 Poems, Rhino, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry East, North American Review, and Third Coast, among others. Currently, he teaches creative writing at the West Virginia Wesleyan College MFA Low Residency Program. 

Sandra Beasley is the author of four poetry collections-Made to Explode, Count the Waves, I Was the Jukebox, which won the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling-as well as Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir and cultural history of food allergies. She served as the editor for Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Honors for her work include the 2019 Munster Literature Centre's John Montague International Poetry Fellowship, a 2015 NEA fellowship, and five DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowships. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Moderator:

Derrick Harriell is the author of Stripper in Wonderland (LSU Press, 2017). He is an Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi.

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Panelists:

Ann J. Abadie is former associate director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and coeditor of numerous scholarly collections from the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Among those many volumes, Fifty Years after Faulkner was released in paperback in July 2020.

Dr. Brian Pugh is the executive director of the Stennis Center for Public Service. He previously served as deputy executive director for the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration, as director of finance for the Office of the Governor, and as a legislative budget analyst for the Legislative Budget Office.

Dr. Pugh is the author of "Chaos and Compromise: The Evolution of the Mississippi Budgeting Process," published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2020. He is currently working on another book titled, "A Weak Governor Still? Legislation, Litigation, and Fiscal Policy in Mississippi."

Monika Gehlawat is Associate Director of the School of Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her critical monograph In Defense of Dialogue: Reading Habermas and Postwar American Literature (2020) is a featured title in Routledge's Press Research in American Literature and Culture Series. She writes and teaches about contemporary literature, visual art, and critical and aesthetic theory, and has published essays in Post45, Contemporary Literature, The James Baldwin Review, and Literary Imaginations, among others. She is the 2021 recipient of USM's Faculty Research Award and the 2020 recipient of the Faculty Senate Teaching Award. Along with serving as the Series Editor of Literary Conversations, Gehlawat is also Critic for the Center for Writers and Post-Chair of the University Graduate Council. Her next project focuses on twenty-first century ekphrastic novels and reflects her career-long commitment to working in the interdisciplinary mode. 

Robby Luckett received his BA in political science from Yale University and his PhD in history from the University of Georgia. A native Mississippian, he returned home, where he is a tenured Professor of History and Director of the Margaret Walker Center and COFO Civil Rights Education Center at Jackson State University. His books include a collection of essays, Redefining Liberal Arts Education in the 21st Century (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), and a monograph, Joe T. Patterson and the White South's Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement, (University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 

Robby is an Advisory Board member for the Mississippi Book Festival, and he serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors of Common Cause Mississippi and as Secretary of the Board for the Association of African American Museums.

Robby has three children: Silas, Hazel, and Flip.

Moderator:

Seetha Srinivasan is director emerita of the University Press of Mississippi. She joined the press in 1980 as its first acquiring editor and advanced to become director in 1998, from which position she retired in 2008. Srinivasan played a leading role in establishing the excellence of UPM's editorial program with its national reputation for books for varied audiences.

Millsaps College awarded Srinivasan an honorary doctorate in humane letters in 2013. That same year she was recognized by the Women's Foundation of Mississippi as one of the state's ten Women of Vision. 

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Alda P. Dobbs is the author of the upcoming novel Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna. She was born in a small town in northern Mexico but moved to San Antonio, Texas as a child. Alda studied physics and worked as an engineer before pursuing her love of storytelling. She's as passionate about connecting children to their past, their communities, different cultures and nature as she is about writing. Alda lives with her husband and two children outside Houston, Texas.

Carrie is the author of the new acclaimed tween novel HORSE GIRL (Penguin Random House) as well as the bestselling Audible adventure series THE FLYING FLAMINGO SISTERS, which was hailed by the New York Times as a Best Audiobook for Road Trips with Kids.

An alum of The Groundlings comedy theater, she's served as a staff writer for several Nickelodeon comedy variety specials and has appeared on Inside Amy Schumer, the Today show and the Comedy Central Stage. You can hear her voice in several audiobooks, animated series and commercials - where she's played everything from an evil robot to a sassy pickle.

As a journalist and essayist, she's contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Architectural Digest, Cosmopolitan, The New York Post, McSweeney's, and the book Mortified: Love is a Battlefield. Her comedic essay, Outsourcing Love - about hiring a virtual assistant to manage her love life - was optioned for a feature film.

Carrie grew up writing plays and riding horses with her sister, actress Lindsay Seim, in the windswept plains of Nebraska.

Gilbert Ford holds a BFA in Illustration from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Writing For Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author and illustrator of picture books Flying Lessons, The Marvelous Thing That Came from a Spring, and How the Cookie Crumbled. The Mysterious Messenger marks his middle grade novel debut that he has authored and illustrated.

Moderator:

Sarah Frances Hardy is the author/illustrator of three children's picture books: PUZZLED BY PINK, PAINT ME!, and DRESS ME!. When she's not in her Oxford, Mississippi, studio painting and creating, Sarah Frances spends her time volunteering with the Friends of the University of MIssissippi Library, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. 

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Panelists:

Angie Thomas was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. A former teen rapper, she holds a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University. Her award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000, starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by George Tillman, Jr. Angie's second novel, ON THE COME UP, is a #1 New York Times bestseller as well, and a film is in development with Paramount Pictures with Angie acting as a producer and Sanaa Lathan directing. In 2020, Angie released FIND YOUR VOICE: A Guided Journal to Writing Your Truth as a tool to help aspiring writers tell their stories. In 2021, Angie returned to the world of Garden Heights with CONCRETE ROSE, a prequel to THE HATE U GIVE focused on seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter that debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Heather Truett is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Memphis and serves as the Development Director for The Pinch literary journal. She is #actuallyautistic and passionate about bringing more neurodivergent voices to the publishing table. Heather was born in Kentucky, sharing a hometown with Loretta Lynn, and grew up in South Carolina. She moved from there to Alabama and now resides in Mississippi with her husband, teenage sons, and three cats. She works as a copywriter and as a writing consultant for University students. Kiss and Repeat is her debut novel.

Jennifer Moffett is the author of the novel Those Who Prey (a 2021 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Youth Literature nominee) and a forthcoming novel (2022) published by Atheneum/Simon & Schuster. After working in New York for several animated television series, which included Arthur and Disney's Doug, she received an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi and wrote for regional publications, including Jackson Free Press. Her short stories and poems have appeared in various literary journals, including New Orleans Review and descant, where she is an Associate Fiction Editor. She won the Gary Wilson Short Story Award and published work in Sundress Publications' Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place. She teaches creative writing at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, where she is their 2021 Mississippi Humanities Council Instructor of the Year. Learn more at jbmoffett.com. 

Moderator:

Sami Thomason-Fyke (she/her) is a Youth Services Specialist at the Lafayette County and Oxford Public Library. She was formerly a bookseller, events coordinator, and social media coordinator at Square Books in Oxford, MS. You can keep up with her reading recommendations at samisaysread.com. @SamiSaysRead

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Host:

Timothy Pakron is a passionate cook, artist, photographer, and creator of the popular blog Mississippi Vegan. Before devoting himself to the culinary arts, he spent time as a fine artist in Charleston, South Carolina, and New York City. While living in NYC, he created the concept of Mississippi Vegan, merging his past and his present while celebrating kindness to animals through delicious food. His cookbook was released in the fall of 2018 with Avery. Pakron currently lives and works in New Orleans.

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Panelists:

Chris Offutt is the author of the novels The Killing Hills, Country Dark, and The Good Brother, the short-story collections Kentucky Straight and Out of the Woods, and three memoirs: The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and My Father, the Pornographer. His work has appeared in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays, among many other places. He has written screenplays for Weeds, True Blood, and Treme, and has received fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations.

Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost, and two poetry chapbooks, Arbor and Double Blind. A second poetry collection, Doll Apollo, will be published in 2022 by LSU Press, and the poetry chapbook Apollo is forthcoming in July from Condensery Press. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines. Originally from Houston, Texas, Melissa studied poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Mississippi, and serves as Associate Editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with two dogs, eleven chickens, and the writer Chris Offutt.

William Boyle is the author of the novels GRAVESEND, THE LONELY WITNESS, A FRIEND IS A GIFT YOU GIVE YOURSELF, CITY OF MARGINS, and SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT (forthcoming November 2021), all available from Pegasus Crime.

Moderator:

Rebecca Lee Wiggs is a member of Butler Snow's litigation department and is an experienced trial attorney who now focuses her practice on pharmaceutical product liability litigation. She tried over 40 cases to jury verdicts in state and federal courts in Mississippi. She served on teams defending manufacturers of prescription and OTC products. As a result of her work deposing sensitive witnesses, she is a frequent trainer for deposition practice and jury decision-making.

Mississippi Business Journal selected her as one of its 2015 50 Leading Business Women. She also received the Mississippi Women Lawyers Association 2016 Women Lawyer of the Year Award and the Mississippi Bar's 2012 Lawyer Citizenship Award. She is a member of PORTICO Legacy Lawyers' Class of 2016 and Leadership Mississippi's Class of 1995. She is a Fellow of the Mississippi Bar Foundation and a Life Fellow of the American Bar Association. 

Rebecca currently serves on the Board of Visitors of Wake Forest University Divinity School, and previously served in leadership roles with the Mississippi Economic Council, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and the Mississippi Bar.

She obtained her J.D. from University of Virginia School of Law and undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University. 

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Panelists:

Jim Crockett is Professor Emeritus of Accountancy at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), and an Adjunct Professor of Accountancy at The University of Mississippi. He earned the BBA and MBA degrees from the University of Mississippi and the DBA from Mississippi State University. Dr. Crockett has served on the faculty of the University of West Florida and as Chairman of the its Department of Finance and Accounting. He also served as Professor and Director of the School of Professional Accountancy at USM. In 2012 he served as Visiting Professor of Accountancy at Western Kentucky University (WKU. Crockett has been an active member of the Mississippi Society of CPAs (MSCPA), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Management Accounting (IMA), and the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA). He was the MSCPA's Educator of the Year in 2005 and Treasurer of the MSCPA in 2006-2007. Crockett has presented many continuing professional education programs on a national basis. He has published three books with the University Press of Mississippi (Operation Pretense, Hands in the Till, and Power Greed Hubris), two monographs, and numerous articles in professional and academic journals. Crockett retired as a Lt. Colonel from the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He is married to the former Dorothy Douglas and they have two grown sons and four grandchildren. Jim is a life-long sports fan.

Jennifer V. O. Baughn is Chief Architectural Historian at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the author of numerous articles on the state’s historic buildings. Michael W. Fazio was Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Mississippi State University and coauthor of The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Buildings across Time: An Introduction to World Architecture. Mary Warren Miller is Executive Director Emeritus of the Historic Natchez Foundation and coauthor of The Great Houses of Natchez.

Lee Harper

Artist and model maker based in Oxford, MS. Created small models of old Oxford during the pandemic and with the help of photographer Pableaux Johnson, put the collection together in book form, tiny oxford.

Melanie Henry received her BBA from the University of Mississippi and her MBA from Mississippi College. She was the Associate Executive Director of The Mississippi Bar for 32 years. Melanie served as Managing Editor of the Mississippi Lawyer magazine, producing over 175 issues. She organized the annual Convention, Lectures, Forums and Workshops, was the Website Content Manager and Elections Manager. She served as Liaison to the Public Information Committee and the Women in the Profession Committee. In 2007, Melanie was the author of The Mississippi Bar's 268 page coffee table book, "A Legacy of Service," celebrating the Bar's 100th Anniversary. In 2020, she authored her second book, "The First 100 Women Lawyers in Mississippi," published by the Nautilus Publishing Company. She retired in 2020 and is enjoying life.

Vincent Venturini is a native of Jackson, having grown up in the southern section of the city. He attended school at St. Therese elementary School and St. Joseph High School. He earned degrees at Mississippi State University (BA) the University of Southern Mississippi (MSW) and the University of Alabama (Ph.D.) Dr. Venturini is the retired Chair of Social Work and Associate Provost at Mississippi Valley State University. He remains busy in his retirement working on local histories of the Jackson area.

Moderator:

Sarah Story, Executive Director of the Mississippi Arts Commission.

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Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist. He is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy and of McGeorge and William Bundy. He won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin). His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He lives in New York City and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Susan Goldmark.

Host:

Katie Blount became director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History February 1, 2015. Blount began her career at MDAH in 1994 in the public information section. She went on to serve as deputy director for communication, overseeing the department's strategic planning process and working with the team that planned the new Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which opened in 2017 in celebration of the state bicentennial.

Blount earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan in English and history and her M.A. in southern studies from the University of Mississippi. She lives in Jackson with her husband and their two children.

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Allison Moorer is a singer/songwriter, producer, and author who has released ten critically acclaimed albums. Her first memoir, Blood, was released in October 2019 to high praise and received starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. She has been nominated for Academy, Grammy, Americana Music Association, and Academy of Country Music Awards. Allison holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School; her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, American Songwriter, Guernica, No Depression, Literary Hub, and The Bitter Southerner. She received the Hall-Waters Prize for Excellence in Southern Writing in 2020. Her second memoir will be released in October 2021. She lives in Nashville.

BRIAN BROOME is an award-winning writer, poet, and screenwriter, and K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is pursuing an MFA. He has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University's Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He lives in Pittsburgh.

ELIZABETH MIKI BRINA is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Bread Loaf Scholarship and a New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. She currently lives and teaches in New Orleans.

Margaret McMullan is the author of nine award-winning books including the novel, In My Mother's House, the story collection Aftermath Lounge, and the anthology, Every Father's Daughter. Her young adult novels How I Found the Strong, When I Crossed No-Bob, and Sources of Light have received best book awards from Parents' Choice, School Library Journal, the American Library Association, and Booklist among other educational organizations. Margaret received an NEA Fellowship and a Fulbright professorship in Hungary to research her memoir Where the Angels Lived.

Margaret's work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Herald, Glamour, The Millions, The Morning Consult, Teachers & Writers Magazine, National Geographic for Kids, Southern Accents, Ploughshares, StorySouth, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Other Voices, Boulevard, The Arkansas Review, Southern California Anthology, and The Sun among others. She served on the faculty at Stony Brook Southampton's MFA Program in New York and she was the Melvin Peterson Endowed Chair in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Evansville in Indiana. She writes full time in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

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Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Kiese Laymon, Ottilie Schillig Professor in English and Creative Writing and the University of Mississippi, is the author of the novel Long Division, the memoir Heavy, and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.

Host:

Jerid P. Woods, also known as Akili Nzuri, is a writer, educator, PhD Candidate, and literary influencer. He was born and raised in Natchez, Ms and survives on an unwavering passion to ignite a love for reading in the youth. He exists as a living testimony to the power of shared stories and knowing one's self. He is the owner and creator of Ablackmanreading.com and the Instagram blog: @ablackmanreading. He is also a part of the Instagram show: @booksarepopculture where he and his cohost discuss books in a new revolutionary way that centers reading as part of popular culture. 

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Tiffany McDaniel is a novelist, poet, and visual artist born and raised in Ohio. She is the author of The Summer That Melted Everything and BETTY. 

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Richard Grant is an award-winning author, journalist, and television host. He currently writes for Smithsonian magazine, The New York Times, Al Jazeera America, the Telegraph (UK), and several other publications. He grew up in London, England, and now lives in Jackson, Mississippi. His latest book is Dispatches from Pluto, a New York Times bestseller and Winner of the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize. His previous books are Crazy River, God’s Middle Finger, and American Nomads.

Martha Hall Foose is a cookbook author and storyteller. Her bestselling debut, Screen Doors and Sweet

Tea, won the James Beard Award for American Cooking and the Southern Independent Booksellers

Alliance Book Award. Martha makes her home with her family in the Mississippi Delta.

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Cassandra King Conroy is an award-winning author of five novels, a book of nonfiction, numerous short stories, magazine articles, and essays. She has taught creative writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars, and worked as a human interest reporter.

King’s first novel, Making Waves has been through numerous printings since its release in 1995. Her second novel, the New York Times bestseller The Sunday Wife, was a Booksense choice; a Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club selection; a People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week; Books-a-Million President’s Pick; Utah’s Salt Lake Libraries Readers’ Choice Award nominee; and a South Carolina Readers’ Circle selection. As one of Booksense’s top discussion selections, The Sunday Wife was selected by the Nestle Corporation for a national campaign to promote reading groups.

The Same Sweet Girls was the national number one Booksense Selection on its release in January 2005; a Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild selection; and spent several weeks on both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Both The Sunday Wife and The Same Sweet Girls were nominated for Southern Independent Booksellers Association’s book of the year award. A fourth novel, Queen of Broken Hearts, set in King’s home state of Alabama and released March 2007, became a Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club Selection as well as a SIBA bestseller. The fifth novel, Moonrise, was a SIBA Okra Pick and a Southern Booksellers bestseller, as was her book of non-fiction, released in 2013, The Same Sweet Girls Guide to Life. Most recently, King has been writing for Coastal Living and Southern Living as well as contributing essays to various anthologies. Her new book is a memoir, Tell Me a Story: My Life With Pat Conroy and it was released from William Morrow on October 29, 2019.

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John F. Marszalek III is a National Certified Counselor and Licensed Professional Counselor in Mississippi. He has been a counselor educator for over 20 years and is currently clinical faculty of the online clinical mental health counseling program at Southern New Hampshire University. He received his PhD in counselor education at Mississippi State University. 

John's research has been published in chapters of edited books and professional counseling journals. Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet is his first book.

Before moving back to Mississippi, John lived in Buffalo, NY, Washington, DC, Fort Lauderdale, FL, and New Orleans, LA. 

John lives with his husband and their two dogs in Starkville, Mississippi

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Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has a lifelong love of Visual Afrofutuism, Pulp entertainment, and action films. He holds other Afrofuturists such as Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Pedro Bell and Overton Lloyd as major influences. He has worked over the years in the storyboarding, film visual development, gaming, comics, and animation industries for clients as varied as Marvel Comics, The Village Voice, Tri-Star Pictures, to Ubisoft Entertainment. He also works as an educator for institutions such as the New York Film

Academy and Howard University. Tim hopes to push forward with his art in the emerging digital content delivery systems of the day. His project, Matty’s Rocket, is a product from his company Dieselfunk Studios. Tim also is the author and illustrator of the upcoming graphic novel, ‘INFINITUM: An Afrofuturist Tale’, published by HarperCollins Amistad in January 2021. Tim makes an empty nest with his wife in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Harlem.

JOHN JENNINGS is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Jennings is co-editor of the Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of the Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Jennings is also a 2016 Nasir Jones Hip Hop Studies Fellow with the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Jennings’ current projects include the horror anthology Box of Bones, the coffee table book Black Comix Returns (with Damian Duffy), and the Eisner-winning, Bram Stoker Award-winning, New York Times best-selling graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic dark fantasy novel Kindred. Duffy and Jennings recently released their graphic novelization of Octavia Bulter’s prescient dystopian novel Parable of the Sower (Abrams ComicArts). Jennings is also founder and curator of the ABRAMS Megascope line of graphic novels.

Donna-lyn Washington edited John Jennings: Conversations, part of the University Press of Mississippi's Conversations with Comic Artists Series. She is adjunct lecturer of English at Kingsborough Community College, and she is also senior editor and senior writer at ReviewFix. She has contributed to Rediscovering Frank Yerby: Critical Essays, published by University Press of Mississippi, as well as entries to the Encyclopedia of Black Comics.

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Michael Farris Smith is the award-winning author of Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, and Rivers. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France. Nick, his sixth novel, releases in January. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

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Nancy K. Bristow has taught at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, for thirty years, where she is a Distinguished Professor of History, serves on the Leadership Team of the Race and Pedagogy Institute, and helped found the African American Studies Program. An award-winning teacher, she is the author of three books, most recently American Pandemic: Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College (Oxford University Press, 2020), the subject of this event. 

C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, author of eight books, former editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and an English instructor at Jackson State University.

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Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi as indicated by her accent. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was an article about her in Right-On Magazine with a picture included. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and an unofficial degree in Hip Hop. She can also still rap if needed. She is an inaugural winner of the Walter Dean Myers Grant 2015, awarded by We Need Diverse Books. Her award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000, starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by George Tillman, Jr. Her second novel, On the Come Up, is on sale now.

Nic Stone was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, GA, and the only thing she loves more than an adventure is a good story about one. After graduating from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to the US to write full-time. Growing up with a wide range of cultures, religions, and backgrounds, Stone strives to bring these diverse voices and stories to her work.

You can find her goofing off and/or fangirling over her adorable little family on most social media platforms.

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Graham and Parker Phillips are brother writer/directors based out of New York and Los Angeles. Parker studied literature at Bucknell University while Graham studied U.S. History at Princeton where he wrote his thesis on indigenous marginalization and resistance in the United States.

Graham has performed in a variety of roles on stage, film and television, including leads in the films Goats, Evan Almighty, XOXO, Staten Island Summer and Blockers, as well as in the Broadway musical 13. He was also a series regular on The Good Wife and currently plays on Riverdale and Atypical.

Their first short film, The Mediator, inspired by their father and set in 1890s gold country, won the 2015 Carmel International Film Festival. Their first feature, The Bygone, premiered at Austin, Bozeman and Deadcenter Film Festivals and was sold to Netflix.

They are set to direct the feature Rumble Through the Dark, based on Michael Farris Smith’s novel The Fighter and produced by Cassian Elwes, as well as Blackwood, based on Smith’s most recent work of the same name. They are also executive producing an original drama series with Michael Farris Smith as well as a thriller series based on John Hart’s New York Times best-selling novel, Redemption Road.

Michael Farris Smith is the award-winning author of Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, and Rivers. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France. Nick, his sixth novel, releases in January. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

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PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH LEMURIA BOOKSTORE OF JACKSON, MS 

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Wayétu Moore is the author of the novel She Would Be King, named a best book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly, and BuzzFeed. She is the founder of One Moore Book, a nonprofit organization that creates and distributes culturally relevant books for underrepresented readers. Her writing can be found in the Paris Review, Guernica, and the Atlantic, among other publications. Moore is a graduate of Howard University, Columbia university, and the University of Southern California. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Active in many community, civic and professional organizations, Roy has received numerous awards and has been cited for outstanding achievements and contributions. Roy recently retired as Vice President for Economic Development and Local Governmental Affairs at Jackson State University. During his administrative tenure at Jackson State, he also served as Executive Vice President and Vice President of External Relations. He has a wife, Rubye and one daughter, Aisha Isoke.

Pamela D.C. Junior

Motivational speaker, historian, and women’s activist, Pamela D.C. Junior is the newly appointed director of the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Mississippi. As former manager of Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, Pamela fought passionately and tirelessly to make the Museum a first-class place of interpretation, bringing the museum from financial struggles to features across the nation, most notably, one of CNN’s “50 States, 50 Spots”. After seventeen years of service at Smith Roberson, Pamela became the inaugural director of the first state-sponsored civil rights museum in the nation, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museums were she welcomed more than 250,000 visitors in her first year, and today, she is at the helm of the Two Mississippi Museums. Here she continues her tireless work to share the stories of Mississippi with audiences all over the world. She believes the stories told in the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum should be used as an educational tool for students. In her words, “If we teach children about the history of Mississippi—sharing the events that give us hope and bring us despair in a public space, where we see examples of people who never gave up, whose strength and tenacity can now give us hope and inspire us all to see others as we see ourselves— you will secure a twinkle in the eyes of many that will last a lifetime.” 

Pamela has been honored over the years for her professional work as well as her community work. In 2015, she was awarded the Margaret Walker Center’s coveted For My People Award, in 2018 she was selected for Visit Jackson’s Hometown Hero and the Magnolia Bar Association’s Harriet Tubman awards, and most recently, she was honored with the 2019 Association of African American Museums Museum Leadership Award for her work in the museum field.

Pamela continues to serve her community with her recent appointments board member for Visit Jackson and advisory board member for the Mississippi Book Festival. She is also a member of Women for Progress of Mississippi. As a woman who knows that she did not get to this position without standing on the shoulders of many women whose vision for African Americans lives on today, she gives homage to the great women of her life such as her grandmother, mother, and mentors.

Pamela is a native of Jackson, Mississippi, and earned a B.S. in Education, with a minor in Special Education from Jackson State University.  

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RON RASH is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize and winner of the 2019 Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature, he is the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University and lives in Clemson, SC

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Tune in for more of the conversation on books dealing with racism, anti-racism and how we can create a positive change though reading.

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Holly Lange, Executive Director of the Mississippi Book Festival, visits with Dr. Ebony Lumumba, First Lady of Jackson, Tougaloo College Associate Professor of English, and Festival Board member, about racism, anti-racism and how we can create positive change.

In a conversation that kicks off the new podcast series “Uncomfortable,” Ebony and Holly talk about books, articles and resources for all ages. The series will feature many of these works by contemporary writers, sharing their experiences, thoughts, and hope for the future. Listen here.

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Photo courtesy Karen Robinson

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She lives with her husband in Coral Gables, Florida, and they spend part of each year in India and France. Haunting Paris is her first novel.

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A proud graduate of the Talbot County Public Schools, she has an A.B. from Harvard College and an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

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Helen Ellis is the author of "American Housewife" and "Eating the Cheshire Cat." Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City. You can find her on Twitter @WhatIDoAllDay and Instagram @americanhousewife.

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Mr. Nixon is the author of “Selling Apartheid: Apartheid South Africa’s Global Propaganda War” (Jacana Media, June 2015). He serves as the visiting associate for Journalism and Media Studies at The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Julia Reed is a contributing editor at Vogue and Newsweek, where she writes the magazine's Food and Drink column. She is author of Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena and The House on First Street, My New Orleans Story.

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